نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
نویسندگان
1 گروه اقتصاد، دانشکده کسبوکار و اقتصاد، دانشگاه خلیج فارس، بوشهر، ایران ,
2 گروه اقتصاد، دانشکده کسبوکار و اقتصاد، دانشگاه خلیج فارس، بوشهر، ایران
چکیده
کلیدواژهها
عنوان مقاله [English]
نویسندگان [English]
Introduction: Climate change and the environmental sustainability movement have forced many policy makers and businesses to reconsider their behavior. The financial and banking sector is no exception to this rule and is undergoing a transition towards digital transformation. Financial institutions worldwide are increasingly turning to digital banking services for their operations, which offer higher operational efficiency and lower but significant environmental impact. Iran is assessed as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, global warming, and environmental degradation. Therefore, understanding Iran’s sensitivity to climate change becomes more and more essential for policymakers who aim to find ways to mitigate climate change and promote environmental sustainability.
Material and methods: Data analysis is based on the panel data econometric model with the generalized least squares method. For this purpose, the digital banking variable has been used as independent variables along with GDP, urbanization rate, energy consumption, and industrialization. Data on the number of digital banking transactions based on the total transactions of five digital payment tools including: mobile banking, internet banking, ATMs, store card readers and branch terminals were extracted from the website of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran for each province on an annual basis. Also, data on the per capita carbon dioxide emissions were obtained from the consumption of gasoline, kerosene, petroleum gas, furnace oil, natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas published in the energy products statistics of the National Iranian Petroleum Products Distribution Company, the country's energy balance and hydrocarbon balance and then converted into CO2 emissions in metric tons using the conversion factors used in the country's energy balance.
Results and discussion: The results show that the digital banking variable has a negative and significant effect on carbon emissions in the provinces of Iran. An increase in per capita digital banking transactions as well as per capita GDP and a decrease in urbanization rate; It can lead to a significant reduction in energy intensity and per capita carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, the effect of the GDP per capita variable on carbon emissions is positive (0.44) and its squared coefficient is negative (-0.13), which is consistent with the research principles. This conclusion indicates the confirmation of the Kuznets environmental hypothesis based on the inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation. According to the results obtained from the present study, the use of clean energies such as biogas energy, solar energy and wind energy is recommended. Also, policymaking in order to improve energy production and distribution technology in the country, realize energy prices, increase technical and environmental standards of industries, expand clean energies, internalize the social costs of carbon emissions and environmental degradation should provide conditions so that the increase in GDP is combined with the lowest environmental costs. Also, urbanization rates and energy consumption have a positive effect on carbon emissions, but the effect of industrialization on carbon emissions is positive but not significant.
Conclusion: In the coming years, it is expected that as the benefits of digital banking become more apparent, there will be more competition in the field of digitalization, and success or failure in this field can completely affect the future of a bank. On the other hand, considering the energy waste in the country and the issue of fuel consumption optimization, policymakers can take a step towards achieving this goal by supporting, encouraging, and encouraging digitalization. The research findings also show that energy intensity and carbon emissions will decrease in parallel with economic development and an increase in per capita income.
کلیدواژهها [English]
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